Replacement hard drive for PVR 9200T

I have had my Humax since 2005 and it has done trusty service but the hard drive is dying and gives up every few days. Opening the box, poking around, pulling cables in and out seems to give a boost of life for another week. I've reset the box to factory settings, checked software updates but to no avail.

Can the hard drive be replaced by simply unscrewing a few screws or is it much more complicated than that? Which hard drives have those of you who have done this used? If Youview had been launching soon I wouldn't have bothered and got a new box, but since this is not immiment would like to upgrade my 9200T.

I have had my Humax since 2005 and it has done trusty service but the hard drive is dying and gives up every few days. Opening the box, poking around, pulling cables in and out seems to give a boost of life for another week.
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If you can get it going by "poking around, pulling cables in and out" then I'm not sure why you think the hard drive is at fault, unless the hard drive connections themselves are damaged.

I would be tempted to try formatting the drive first. I assume there is nothing on it you wnat to keep as you are contemplating swapping it? It might simply be some sort of disk corruption that a format may sort out.

I'll try reformatting the drive again but I suspect the hard drive itself is faulty. When it fails the background hum disappears. When I switch the box back on I can hear the drive kicking into action, or trying to do so, failing and conking out.

It will work with a basic IDE HD.
The actual drive is a Seagate ST3160022ACE
The ACE part indicates that the drive is specially made to enable streaming without too much error checking.
You can replace it with any IDE. Just remove IDE cable and power cable then remove cradle from chassis (4 screws). You can see the HD is attached to cradle with 4 screws (with rubber washers for noise reduction).
You would have to format the drive once in the Humax via menu.

It will work with a basic IDE HD.
The actual drive is a Seagate ST3160022ACE
The ACE part indicates that the drive is specially made to enable streaming without too much error checking.
You can replace it with any IDE.

And it may or may not work; in particular various types of drive do not come out of standby properly with the 9200.

Quote:

You would have to format the drive once in the Humax via menu.

Nope; the Humax will automatically offer to format the drive the first time it is powered up.